Treating the Patient, Not Just the Disease: the Pain and Palliative Care Service at the NIH Clinical Center is the "Quality of Life" Team

EPISODE #17
Uploaded:  May 13, 2009
Running Time:  3:40

SCHMALFELDT:  From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. It’s one thing to cure a disease. It’s quite another thing to heal an entire human being --

BERGER:  When you think of illness of any type, one can cure an illness – sometimes. A lot of times, we can’t. If one can cure, or even if one can’t cure, one can always help somebody heal. And that’s essentially what we do in palliative care.

SCHMALFELDT:  That was Dr. Ann Berger, chief of the Pain and Palliative Care Service at the NIH Clinical Center. Their mission?

BERGER:  We take care of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of care. I like to say we’re the “quality of life” team. We recommend to have medicine given sometimes, for whatever the problem is. But many times we actually use the integrative complementary modalities which help the “suffering” piece, the “psychosocial-spiritual” piece.

SCHMALFELDT:  Pain and Palliative Care is medical care that provides relief from suffering and support for the best possible quality of life for patients and their families facing advanced chronic illness. Palliative care improves quality of life, by focusing on the physical, psychosocial, spiritual aspects of care. Both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic modalities are used including mind-body modalities, energy medicine, acupuncture, pet therapy, music therapy, art therapy and massage.  It was officially recognized as a medical specialty in 2008. Dr. Berger instituted the Clinical Center’s Service in August of 2000. She believes there will be a time when pain and palliative care becomes part of the curriculum for medical students.

BERGER:  Well, yeah. Absolutely. As we’ve become a medical field, as we’ve become a real specialty, there’s more and more need for all physicians to learn more about this. And so, do I think that it will be put more into the medical curriculum? Yes. That’s part of the benefits of becoming a medical field.

SCHMALFELDT:  For now, however, medical students with an interest in pain and palliative care services can seek to enroll in a Clinical/Research Electives Program on the subject at the Clinical Center. There are four and eight week courses in the fall, winter and spring. Students will observe clinical consults of patient subjects referred to the Pain and Palliative Care Service, prepare informal case or journal club presentations, and learn about research in pain and palliative care. In other words, they will learn about treating the entire patient – not just the disease.

BERGER:  You know, if you think about it, other medical services are kind of looking at the illness itself. We’re concentrated on the quality of life. And you need both when you’re taking care of people with any chronic, life-threatening illness.

SCHMALFELDT: For more information about the Pain and Palliative Care Service and other updates from NIH Clinical Center, including news about the medical research going on here every day, log on to http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov. From America’s Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.  In Bethesda, Maryland, I’m Bill Schmalfeldt at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

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